VM game cache - Move files from array to cache when they're being read.

[jztreso]

Hey i've been looking into the idea of making a cached games share for my unraid gaming VM, but to me it doesn't look like the caching system in unraid covers my needs, or maybe there's something I don't understand about the different caching methods?

 

The most logical approach I found was to use the array as main storage and the cache as second storage option (move from Array -> Cache)

But this presents me with a couple issues:

1st issue i find is that if my game library exceeds the 1tb of my cache drive (which it will quickly) how does unraid know which files and folders to move to the cache drive? I was hoping unraid prefers the most frequently/recently used files to store on the cache, but as far as i can tell there's no tiered caching system in unraid?

2nd issue is, is there a way to invoke the mover to move the files to the array, once the're being read on the drive?
If i use the array as the initial download path, that mean they won't be on the cache, once i want to play them.
I was hoping there would be an option to move the files to cache upon reading, but afik there's not a way to mitigate this either?

If there's a way to set this up in mover, with a docker/plugin or perhaps passthrough the ssd to the vm and use host caching instead?
Cheers

Edited March 11 by jztreso
thought of multiple options that might fix my issue

[JonathanM]

Short answer, the "cache" nomenclature is a holdover from very early in Unraid's history, but it was never a full "cache" in the classic sense.

 

The preferred term nowadays is pools, since there can be multiple types and purposes for these groupings of single or multiple disks.

 

The mover tuning plugin may provide some of the functionality you are looking for.